One of the major projects to change the face of late Ottoman Damascus, was the construction of a net of three tramway tracks. Based on hitherto neglected newspaper reports from six Damascene and Beiruti newspapers, the history of the tramway project between 1885 and 1914 provides a view into the changing notions and contested meanings of public places, public spaces, and the public sphere during the final decades of Ottoman rule in Bilād al-Shām. The project commenced in 1885 with a local initiative to catapult Damascus into the modern age of electric power, mass transportation, and city-wide illumination. When from 1905 onwards tracks were finally laid and electric street lighting was distributed throughout the city, it was a foreign company that appropriated some of the town's most important roads for generating private benefits. The municipality and the townspeople subsidised the endeavour through providing the streets the tracks were laid on, many of which had only recently been paved by the baladiyya, through the payment of fares, and through the payment of taxes that financed substantial parts of the construction and operating costs. This appropriation of newly established public places for the sole profit of a private and foreign company – profits, which exceeded the municipal budget – proved highly contentious during the years following the project's inauguration in 1907. Elites contested the idea of paying fares; the municipality argued over the payment of excessive fees for the street lamps and over the repaving of streets; the company blackmailed the municipality through repeated power cuts; and popular protest targeted the municipality and to a larger extent the company for extracting taxes and the payment of fares despite the hitherto modern streets having been turned into muddy swamps during winter or dusty plains in summertime, with large chunks of iron driving at high speeds and killing people not quick enough to leave the street, while public morals were violated by men and women sharing the tightly cramped compartments. This situation resulted in numerous violent assaults on the tramway cars, the exclusion of the populace from inauguration ceremonies, and finally a prolonged black out of street lights and popular tramway boycott in 1913.